Our Perpetual Care Program

The VeteranShield Project^sm

...It's not about glory; it's about Their Story.

    Every VeteranShield shares a common heritage: each one is designed and purpose-built to provide remembrance of an honored Veteran "through the ages." Because of that unique long-term preservation perspective, our organization is firmly committed to providing for the permanent care and maintenance of each and every VeteranShield, so that each shield will remain an important historical component in the continuous growth and integrity of the nationwide VeteranShield Project. We plan to fulfill this commitment by ensuring the highest standard of monitoring, refurbishment and replacement care possible, through the implementation of our VeteranShield Perpetual Care Program.

    For example: because each and every VeteranShield shall be individually-numbered and will always remain the property of the non-profit VeteranShield organization and membership, that fact alone ensures that no VeteranShield can ever be legally offered for "sale", whether on eBay or anywhere else.   It also means our organization has a natural obligation to provide for the continuous tracking, care and property management of all our nation's VeteranShields, in order to properly protect the joint property rights of our membership. That proud duty of care will continue to be our responsibility for as long as we exist; moreover, it is the essence of how well we truly fulfill our long-term mission in the field.

    A further example: should our office receive notification that a VeteranShield has been stolen, damaged, voluntarily relinquished, abandoned, or illegally offered for sale, we will act quickly to take any and all action necessary to immediately recover that VeteranShield – at our cost – so that we can repair, refurbish, or replace it, and return it to public service as soon as possible, so that it may continue to be displayed in honor of the memory of the Veteran for which it was originally commissioned. In the case of abandonment (such as the death of the original Guardian, bereft of final instructions to the VeteranShield organization), we will undertake any costs required to relocate it into the care of another trustworthy volunteer VeteranShield member – in or nearby the same community, if at all possible – so that the new adoptive Guardian or Curator can continue to place that VeteranShield on public display in the original Veteran's hometown during each Veterans Day and/or Memorial Day.

    Finally, we guarantee to provide a no-cost means for the return of any worn-out or abandoned VeteranShield "back home" to us, so that we can provide temporary storage or – if need be – a respectful and dignified means of final destruction and/or recycling. We strongly feel that it would be an absolute disgrace for any VeteranShield to ever be dumped into a landfill, no matter what its condition.

Plus: everlasting digital storage...

    We've also taken impressive steps to properly provide for the perpetual warehousing of all of the historic digital images of our honored Veterans.

    We understand and fully support the critical need of our members to ensure the long-term physical security of their Veteran-related digital photographs, milblogs, journals and scanned images. That's why all of the digital Veteran materials and Veteran collages submited to our online Hall of Honor will be permanently stored – free of charge – in each member's own password-protected account on our dedicated secure VeteranShield servers. In addition, you can rest easy in the knowledge that an automated complete system back-up will be conducted weekly, transfering all of your stored images to fully redundant data centers in an ultra-secure electronic media vault, located deep within an underground data bunker at the world-famous Iron Mountain data protection facility.

    Why is this such an important long-term benefit for our membership? Well, as this recent article about the Kodak Gallery demonstrates, the era of so-called "free" online photo storage is rapidly drawing to a close. The fact is, trusting any non-dedicated commercial website to permanently safeguard your precious historical memories forever is taking a BIG chance. Let's face it: there is now a clear and present danger that those precious digital images could be instantly deleted at any time  – without your knowledge or consent. That's why it doesn't make sense to depend on the ever-changing terms, conditions, and decisions of any purely profit-driven online photo business for the long-term protection of your historical military treasures; it's simply too great a risk to take.

    That's why the nonprofit VeteranShield Project will be providing all of our members with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that their one-time donation for a VeteranShield will also guarantee that their irreplaceable digital memories will remain safe, secure, and accessible for generations to come, deep within the protected confines of Iron Mountain, without the need to ever pay any additional fees whatsoever. As an added bonus, our members will also have the option of sharing their historical Veteran-related photos with the Digital Vault of the National Archives, should they choose to do so.

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To provide the permanent financing necessary to fulfill all our long-term obligations under the Perpetual Care Program, an irrevocable endowment fund -- the VeteranShield Perpetual Care Fund -- is being established, in cooperation with the National Philanthropic Trust. To endow this fund, a minimum of 10% or $50 (whichever is greater) of the original Minimum Required Donation Amount (MRDA) alloted to produce and distribute each VeteranShield shall be set aside and deposited into a Federally-insured trust account with a reputable bank, which shall act as sole trustee of the Fund.

There shall be absolutely no additional costs to the membership for automatic protection under this Perpetual Care Program; it is included free with every one-time MRDA initially provided to fund a VeteranShield. As stated earlier, a trust account investment of $50 will be set aside from the MRDA funds provided by the member at the time the VeteranShield is originally commissioned.

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The VeteranShield Project is currently in the final development and testing phase; the first production model is expected in early 2016. For information on how you can reserve a VeteranShield now for only $100, please click here.